OF THE life of Plato we know little, and much of the in-
formation we do possess is legendary. There exist, in-
deed, certain Epistles attributed to him, but their authenticity
has been a matter of debate among scholars. They do, however,
give an account of various episodes in his life that seem not in-
herently improbable. Yet even if we accept them as true, much
still remains conjectural.

In one sense this absence of knowledge may be a blessing,
since it enables us to consider and evaluate his contribution as
a thinker without the distraction of irrelevant personal con-
siderations. Nevertheless, since he, more than most serious
thinkers, wrote imaginatively, and because he was admittedly a
master of irony, it would be useful to know more of his prac-
tical activities. Lacking full information, we run the risk of
taking the true meaning for irony and vice versa. Mercifully,
we know enough to reject the view that his whole political phi-
losophy, with which we are here concerned, was an idle dream
or a mere jeu d'esprit.

Plato was born in 428 B.C., and his early years coincided with
the latter stages of the Peloponnesian War, which ended in dis-
aster for Athens. That war impressed the Greek world as the
Great War did our own. How far the young Plato was emo-
tionally influenced by the course of the conflict and the patri-
otism aroused by it is a matter of conjecture. His family, how-
ever, was distinguished, and he was related to various leaders of
the Athenian democracy; while Solon, the great law-giver and
reformer, was among his ancestral connections. When he

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